Mr. Wrench’s motive for hastening to Nantwich was to be present at the hiring fair at a small hamlet within a few miles of that place.
On Pack-rag Day (the 29th of September), the serfs of agriculture pack up their clothes and seek fresh masters.
And on this day the farmers, dressed in their Sunday clothes, ride to the mansions of their landlords, their faces bright with honest pride, their leather bags filled with gold coins and bank notes.
The scene has been faithfully depicted in Wilkie’s celebrated picture of the “Rent Day.”
The landlords, seated before their blue bundles of quarter’s bills, receive their tenants with smiles of welcome and gratitude—that is, if the latter are furnished with the amount of rent due.
In some parts of England it is still customary among the lords of manors and proprietors of large lands to give a dinner to their tenants on the rent days, as shown in Wilkie’s well-known picture.
But these quarterly feeds are now rapidly dying out of date, and will soon no longer exist, except in the hall of some youthful squire, who may be gifted with a dramatic passion for revivals.
Like fairs, these convivial gatherings are fast becoming obsolete.
In the year referring more especially to this history, the hiring fair to which Mr. Wrench was about to pay a visit happened to fall on quarter-day; so all the farmers of the neighbourhood paid their rents early, and rode on to the place to engage their carters, shepherds, and farm maids for the ensuing year.
Mr. Wrench was not a man to be a day behind the fair. He came to a halt at a small village within an easy walk of it the day before its fun and frolic was to commence.